Dreaming
forum post
I did not know under which subject to place my question so I am sorry if I made a mistake. I want to ask about dreaming from TCM point of view. For about a week I really dream a lot and deeply and having problems to wake up in the morning. I also sweat much more than usually. I think it is related to some heat condition because I had a fever a little a week ago. Even though I have not felt any cold symptoms since than I still have that excessive dreams. It took me to a question about dreaming. When I went to see my chinese medicine practitioner for the first time he also asked me how did I dream. What the "healthy dreaming" should be like then? For example, sometimes I cannot remember it almost at all, sometimes I can remember each detail and so.
"gunji" has published 7 other forum posts
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Comments / Discussions:
comment by "archived-user"
on Dec 2010
You have night time sweat means yin deficiency pattern cause Heart fire & Kidney water no harmony, The TCM medicine is "Tian Wang Bu Xin Dang". The points are : Ren6, Sp10, Kd3, Ub15, 18, 23, Si3, Ht6,7.
comment by "ChadD" (acupuncturist)
on Dec 2010
That's a good question and I'll be curious to read other responses. If you are sweating (more at night) and having trouble sleeping it is most often yin deficiency. On to dreaming.
I'll preface my response with while there are some relatively fixed rules with regards to the significance of dreaming in Chinese Medicine I feel you have also take into account the nature of the person. Artistic, visual types tends to have more vivid colorful dreams than other types of people, possibly very outside of what they are presenting with in tcm terms. So, as with most of Chinese Medicine, don't use one single criteria to form an entire diagnosis....
The most common patterns with excessive or vivid dreaming as a component are:
Stomach Qi Def/Food Retention
Liver Fire
Heart Fire
Kidney Yin Deficiency
Heart Yin Deficiency
Blood Deficiency
Generally speaking the heat and sometimes empty heat lead to excessive dreaming and the vivid dreams come from the spleen/heart/blood deficiency more than other factors. They can all lead to excessive, vivid dreaming w/insomnia, poor sleep however. The diagnoses are really just two sides of the coin - both empty heat and full heat will keep the mind/body animated and blood deficiency will lead to no ability to ground (no home for the spirit). Food retention is the only one that will come and go - the other patterns tend to have many other symptoms associated with them and take a while to develop (and to treat). They are, however, fairly easy to pinpoint when you take the entire person and their medical history and diagnostic findings into account.
comment by "peter_med"
on Dec 2010
By western, sleep is divided into two broad types: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM or non-REM) sleep. When you wake up on REM, you remeber the dreams. When you wake up on NREM , you don't remeber the dreams. Too much dream means too much REM wakeup or too long REM period. It's often associated with the sleeping problems. Some type of medication like benzodiazepines help insomnia by reducing REM. By TCM, just like Chad mentioned, you need combine with other symptoms to form TCM pattern and treat it.
comment by "gunji"
on Dec 2010
According to my practitioner I have qi deficiency and qi stagnation problem but do not know if it is liver qi stagnation or so but I assume it is some problem in middle and lower warmer. Me personally don't think I might have any yin deficiency condition since I have mainly the opposite symptoms like cold limbs and so on. Anyway my kindeys might be weak because I have problems with teeth quite a lot and my sex drive is kind of low. Is practising qigong every day enough to strenghten kidneys?
I think my problem the last two weeks might be caused by cold. The cold symptoms are not that heavy to make me big problems but I did have a sore throat a little in the morning. And to wake up today was quite difficult. I set alarm for 7 a.m. but when it rang I changed it to 8 a.m. and at 8 a.m. I changed it ones more to 9 a.m. Finally I woke up around 9:30 a.m. The dreaming I have is really deep but it doesn't make me to wake up during night I think.
comment by "Walter_Cloud108"
on Mar 2012
I like Dreaming’ although I don’t have any superstitions about them like some people, who think that there is some extra special insight to be gleaned from them, but I generally enjoy my dreams.
In fact if I knew how to induce them I think I would, however, sometimes they are not all pleasant, what is pleasant’ is awakening and realizing that it was just a dream! Lol. Although I suspect some thoughts are from outside suggestions they are nevertheless just thoughts some yours & some from our familiars.
The point is that I like dreaming & so I study them a lot-when I have them
and I find that if I don’t calm mySelf before taking rest because of worry
or just going to sleep while still contemplating a unsolved problem(s), I tend to wake up with that problem/train of thought still going-on within my mind sometime I admit’ it is accompanied with a/the solution! But more often
its just continuations of the many confusing sonairreos I was contemplating as I went to sleep.
In other wards I was worried as I went to sleep and I woke up worrying as well. (Not good), because that means I lost a lot of valuable sleep/rest with no good results.
The Chinese define worry as “overThinking” and we don’t have to be asleep to do it, as we all know. So my advice to you would be’ before you take rest or when you hit the snuzz alarm the 1st. time, intentionally begin some mindful breathing practices/exercises) in this way the quality of your rest will be greatly improved; your mind will be distracted from other things and your energies will be of an uninterrupted nature. It is in fact quite an enjoyable exp. & I’d recommend it for everyone weather dreams are a tribalism factor or not, indeed I have had some very pleasant rests that I can attribute specifically to the states of deep relaxation accomplished through mindful breathing practices performer just before dropping off to sleep.
In the meanTime I would suggest !
See: the Chinese symptoms and recommendations for (OverThinking) if only to understand better the possible emotional and physical compactions that this unrest could lead into, I think that this could be important/serious and that you were right to put it out here into this thinktank! Good luck ..with that.
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